So we saw what happens when the mafia gets really unlucky and hits the hider on night 1. It allows for the hider to come out and state his target without risking losing a mislynch.

The hider is a bit of a risky role, but it was the only role to be able to conclusively clear anyone. I actually quite like the role. It was just unfortunate that the mafia felt as though the player with said role was the best night 1 kill target.

The detective/psychologist is interesting for a few reasons. First, the detective/psychologist can lie about his role name without any repercussions, because he is the only player in the game that knows with any certainty whether a detective or a psychologist exists. Second, it gives the village another decent, but generally not overpowering information role. Third, it forces the mafia to decide whether to vary up who is performing the kills or to stack it on one user. The detective is clearly the better role of the two, but the psychologist is useful for situations like what happened with Hulk Hogan.

The tracker works somewhat in conjunction with the detective/psych as I mentioned before. It's a pretty simple to understand information role, and is the only information role capable of confirming other power roles.

The numbers are pretty fair; the mafia can work to earn 1 less mis-lynch through good play and having the hider target them, or by thinking well about who would be the most town-like member that the hider would risk hiding behind. Meanwhile, the hider can do just the opposite for the village and appear town enough to be killed and avoid death. It would take 4 mis-lynches normally for the mafia to win, which is doable, and can get 3 with some luck with a hider death, which is much more likely than a hider avoiding death. Getting mislynches on days 1 and 2 usually isn't too hard, and getting one more is fairly easy as well. Getting the 4th takes a bit more work, but is certainly fair.

In terms of power roles, I think that my removing the potential for a vigilante somewhat hurt the mafia's ability to disprove detective/psych evidence and to counter-claim vigilante, but I think that it was worth doing this to remove that element of risk to relying so heavily on strong vigilante play. The power roles weren't extravagantly strong outside of possibly the hider, as the other two roles were only successful in one guilty, and that happened from a lack of counter-claiming.

The tracker is not too hard to counter-claim, but in this game, the mafia chose not to do so. I think that counter-claiming the tracker would have potentially been very strong play and could force the village to lose one of their better power roles as the game goes on. The tracker checks counter-claiming the other two roles, and counter-claiming hider is essentially suicide and makes the mafia lose much more potential of having a double kill night. I think that having too many more PRs would have been detrimental and like the amount that were present.

In terms of how the set up played out, I already mentioned the unfortunate hider kill setting up all 3 PRs being alive with a confirmed hider target clear. The day 1 mislynch wasn't too surprising. The day 2 lynch was salvageable for the mafia, coming down to deadline antics. The tracker + psych on Hulk Hogan, as well as all of the PR clears could have been avoided by a counter-claim on the tracker. However, the ideal person to do this would have been Hulk Hogan (lurking to a degree makes sense with a PR, wasnt particularly scummy d1 and wasn't on the village mislynch, Borat under suspicion, Roosevelt not playing like a PR and wants to live as long as possible). This didn't end up happening though, and led to one guilty through the combination of the tracker and psych. From there, the PRs mostly just functioned as clears.

Player-by-Player:

More Cowbell - Albert Einstein, Villager, Lynched Day 1

MC did seem pretty scummy for most of day 1. He was trying to contribute though and I think it's just sort of his style that seems a bit scummy at times (I thought he was the last mafia for a good period of time in the last mafia game). His last couple of posts were pretty obv-town though. His inexperience and slight scumminess was exploited by Roosevelt and led to his pushing of the lynch. Then, 4 villagers jumped off of the Borat lynch when he was at L-1 or 2 very quickly to finish him. I didn't get the chance to talk to him too much during the game to see his thoughts since he didn't come on IRC too much, but he definitely was trying to contribute. Tunnel visioned a bit on Ron Burgundy/UncleSam because he was the one attacking him, but eventually did see Borat as scummy, so he couldn't have been too bad with his reads.

shinyskarmory - Borat, Mafia Grunt, Lynched Day 2

Didn't play too great for the most part, but played okay enough to squeak out of one lynch and almost out of two. I felt as though he probably should have been lynched day 1, but from talking with a good number of players, they felt as though "Borat is too obvious." Didn't implicate any of his teammates, which certainly helped quite a bit. His interactions with some other players like Yosemite Sam seemed to make some people think that there was a scumteam there, but I didn't really see the buddying and doubt shinyskarmory did it intentionally, if at all. shinyskarmory's day 2 started off pretty well, in my opinion. However, his play deteriorated throughout the day, leading to the horrible attempt to stealth lynch to save himself. I think he thought too poorly of his play and felt a stealth was the only way to save himself, but I disagree; he played well enough that a Rollie Fingers lynch or a Friedrich Nietzsche lynch were both perfectly viable. He just needed to say something like "better him than me; I'm town." Instead, he failstealths with 2 minutes before deadline and dies. Helps dispel fears of Nietzsche being mafia and slightly clears Rollie Fingers through doing this, but is helped later on by Yosemite Sam's denial of this and his eventual death and town flip, keeping Rollie Fingers as a viable lynch target to the end.

Empoof - Burt Reynolds, Villager, Killed Night 2

Empoof had work a lot of the time, so he couldn't dedicate huge amounts of time to playing, but he did genuinely put in an effort into reading the posts and keeping up with the thread. I think that at first he was a bit nervous about posting his thoughts since he felt as though his reads wouldn't be right, but I prodded him to the point that he realized that he needed to be saying stuff. That said, his reads were pretty good; he had Hulk Hogan and Borat read as mafia for most of his time alive. His lynch on Albert Einstein isn't too surprising, since Einstein hadn't played too great and that he probably hadn't spent as much time analyzing the recent posts of Einstein. Still, an unfortunate decision that brought with it some suspicion. His posts were sporadic, but distinctly average. He didn't really do much scumhunting, but shared his thoughts when he could. Looked a bit scummy in the process, to the point of being the unanimous choice for Dali/Spiffy's hide target. Still, definitely tried and didn't do poorly enough to be mislynched.

Spiffy - Salvador Dali, Hider, Killed Night 2

Spiffy was unanimously thought to be the most clean villager coming out of Day 1 from virtually all eyes. His reads weren't perfect, but he was one of 4 villagers to still be voting for Borat at the end of Day 1, so he certainly had that read correct. Put in effort to try to prod players into activity, like with Hulk Hogan. I'm not remotely surprised the mafia tried to kill him Day 1. He actually wanted to idle his night action Night 1 though, since he didn't think he would be the target. However, after some thought and the realization that a mafia kill on him would not succeed at all (he thought it would be redirected to who he hid behind), he decided to hide behind Mario, a pretty obvious villager and safe choice. I don't think clearing Mario made any difference since I don't think Agape would have ever been mislynched after his Day 1, but Spiffy's lack of dying Night 1 was huge for the village, letting him openly force the mafia into killing Burt Reynolds instead of the tracker. His Day 2 was quite good as well, actively using his vote to pressure players, and even had his end of the day vote on Theodore Roosevelt, another mafian. Overall great play.

Altair/Aura_Guardian - Hulk Hogan, Mafia Grunt, Lynched Day 3

Altair's post in the Smogon thread seemed to be the scummiest thing he did. I had 3 people come up and tell me that they wanted to lynch whomever Altair was, all because of that post. Altair wasn't the most active, but I felt as though he was the least scummy mafia member by a good margin. Tried to act town and seemed to succeed at that; most of the suspicion against him seemed to be on Day 1 and only really for his activity level. Day 2, Aura Guardian came in and did a pretty good job as well. I think Aura Guardian was a bit more scummy than Altair (some of his large Day 2 posts were a bit scummy, although no one picked up on that), but was town enough that Ron Burgundy/UncleSam felt that it was much more likely that they would get a clean out of Hulk Hogan than a guilty - and not just because of the statistical probability. When Day 3 rolled around, he knew his fate was sealed and tried to waste the village's time and get an early lynch. While he did not manage to self-hammer, he did manage to convince Agape to hammer him, ending a lot of discussion. Unfortunate that night actions managed to get him, but since he nor anyone else counter-claimed any power roles, it was to be expected at some level.

UncleSam - Ron Burgundy, Tracker, Killed Night 3

I did everything randomly in this game, from the sign ups, to the aliases, to the roles, except for one thing. UncleSam wanted a power role to the point of being unwilling to play without one, so I gave him the tracker. His early Day 1 was pretty bad, honestly. I'm not surprised by that though, since UncleSam is the kind of player that wants some sort of evidence to be used against other players, whether that be night results, or the actions of someone dead. So he played badly enough that he felt as though he had to reveal that he was a power role. I think the mafia made a mistake in thinking that UncleSam could have been the hider; I think he would have outright claimed hider if he were the hider, since he wouldn't exactly be under threat of dying because of how scummy he had looked. Still, after that claim, he played pretty well, putting needed pressure on Borat and almost having him lynched. When Day 2 rolled around, he seemed to seize a lot of control of the game, really dictating the flow and the argumentation of both Day 2 and Day 3. It's hard to argue against how he did, with 2 mafians dead. Made the correct calls in his role usage. Didn't read Hogan correctly, but read him correctly enough that his target Night 1 was based on "I don't think he is mafia, but if he is mafia, he is probably the player who would do the kill." Then saw that he could definitively clear/out Hogan by targeting him again. Kept pressure on Borat Day 2 when a lot of players wanted to let off of him. For day 3, he was certain it was either Yosemite Sam or Theodore Roosevelt. It's unsurprising that those were the next two players lynched.

Paperblade - Yosemite Sam, Villager, Lynched Day 4

Paperblade was ok this game. He wasn't super time invested into this game because of a few other games he was in, but he still put in time to developing reads. This may be wrong, but I don't think he ever really took the early suspicion on him seriously and felt he could play out of it. However, most people had made up their minds about suspicions by Day 3ish, so his lynching wasn't too surprising. Did put in effort at the end to try to get the vote off of him and to voice his suspicions of Rollie Fingers before dying. Was overall hurt by thinking too much about his reads on Borat and Friedrich Nietzsche and consequently not having the best voting pattern to support his cleanliness. If the players alive on Day 4 outside of Agape were more active, he may have been able to swing the lynch off of him. However, due to misreading Borat's vote as not simply a stealth but as "not me," he may have led the village to the equally wrong path of lynching Rollie Fingers.

Agape - Mario, Villager, Killed Night 4

Agape was a very…interesting player. He was never afraid to hold an unpopular opinion, voicing doubt on UncleSam's claim throughout Day 1 to the point of being willing to lynch it. Was active all throughout the game except for the very beginning, but established himself very early as an obvious villager who would suspect anyone who suspected him. While this caused some problems with keeping his vote on Ron Burgundy and is not generally a good way to find mafia, the way he played made for a very clear target for Spiffy to hide behind: unlikely to be killed, very likely town. Seemed to think that Roosevelt was mafia for quite a while, although he did allow for Yosemite Sam to be lynched instead. Still, a pretty good game.

Blue_Tornado – Theodore Roosevelt, Mafia Grunt, Lynched Day 5

B_T did an excellent job as mafia, and being the last mafian to die definitely speaks to that. He was very vocal through the beginning of the game and was not afraid to push his false reads. Blue Tornado really single-handedly had More Cowbell lynched on Day 1 through his play. Of course, he dirtied his hands a bit in trying to not press his teammates, but the way that he did it made it so that the game was still salvageable for him up until the end. Initially, Blue_Tornado wanted to go under the radar as some meh player and just spam Victini pictures, but once it became clear that people could tell that he was a capable player, he started contributing a bit more evidence in his posts. Outside of his obvious “being wrong on his reads,” he had a few scummy posts in day 1, but his Day 2 was pretty good. However, once both his partners died, it became increasingly obvious who the last mafia was. Still, he managed to avoid the lynch one day and probably could have had a Rollie Fingers mislynch fairly easily on Day 5 with a bit more luck or activity. However, lynching one of Alex Louis Armstrong or Friedrich Nietzsche would have been difficult. Still, B_T knew to keep bringing up his early Nietzsche suspicions to keep him as a potential lynch target. However, his play and everyone’s inactivity caught up to him in the end and he was lynched.

Gronkasaurus Rex – Rollie Fingers, Villager, Survived

I think of Gronkasaurus Rex as the village equivalent of Blue Tornado in some respects: long posts, fairly decent logic behind them, but ended up almost always being wrong. Gronkasaurus Rex was active up until the last couple of days, when no one was active. Still, did a good bit of scumhunting and tried to help out the village a ton with his reads on potential scum teams. He was another of the villagers who at the last minute switched from Borat to Albert Einstein on Day 1, which is unfortunate. Still, he definitely put in a good deal of time trying to pressure players and expressing his reads. It’s just a shame he usually ended up being wrong, from the Einstein lynch to Nietzsche suspicions to the Yosemite Sam lynch. It's always nice to see new faces in Smogon mafias, and he certainly showed he knows how to play.

Eagle4 was the first to correctly identify all 3 mafia members (with some hints), and he did so about 5 hours after being subbed out, so good on him. His play in game wasn’t remarkable, but it was active and not particularly scummy. His reads were ok; he suspected Nietzsche, Yosemite Sam, and Roosevelt upon being subbed out, which make sense. He panicked a bit when he received a vote on Day 2 and immediately claimed, which I don’t think he needed to panic about. He probably was going to want to claim anyway, but beyond that he was generally a reasonably townie Villager with pretty good activity and ok reads. IFM…lol. He RNG’ed his last vote (he excluded Armstrong as a possibility at least), didn’t reads days 1 or 2, and made me very frustrated. He had decent reasons for being inactive, but I really wish he would have been active; he PMed me within 3 minutes of saying “all players have received roles” saying that he wanted in. Citro was only Dr. Fu Manchu for 20 minutes, but he is the reason that they got the guilty on Hulk Hogan. He wasn’t too sold on wanting to play, and when IFM logged onto IRC 3 minutes after deadline trying to send an action (which would have psyched Ron Burgundy instead <_<), he let IFM take his spot back since IFM wanted it.

When I looked at my randomized pool, I was worried about how active TBE would be, since he only had 4 posts and I knew nothing about him. However, I never had to worry about that, because he never opened his role PM, so I subbed in Crux. Crux established early that he was a pretty smart person, but didn’t really know what to do with regards to NOC. Most of his posts, while limited in number, were usually focused on some smaller issues and thoughts that he knew he could contribute to, although as time went on he did start to get a bit more into it. However, he had a bit of a family emergency Day 2, so Walrein subbed in. Walrein was really inactive, admitting that he did not read any of Day 1 and most of Day 2. Still, he tried, sort of. He was busy with hosting Diplomacy, so that cut into a good bit of his time. He ended up voting for Rollie Fingers on the last day, so he didn’t have great reads. Still, read enough to realize that Quagsires was pro-town and was unlikely to vote him if it came down to it.

Quagsires - Friedrich Nietzsche, Villager, Survived

Quagsires didn’t ever seem to be wrong in his votes, except he suspected Yosemite Sam, and for a short period of time voted for Ron Burgundy. Nietzsche played fairly well, establishing through his votes that he was pro-town. His posts weren’t particularly scummy (although B_T tried to spin them that way), but they weren’t exactly super townie either. He seemed to recognize all 3 mafia as being suspicious, although he didn’t necessarily think they were the most suspicious. He did a little bit of scumhunting, a little bit of stating his opinion. His posts ended up being pretty helpful, and he ended up being one of the people most thought of as being clean as the game went on. He ended up being the deciding vote in the end, so good on him for choosing right between two people he viewed as a bit suspicious.

Awards:

Best Post: Agape’s first post in Day 4
It’s amazing, you need to read it.

Honorary Mention: Quagsires’ ;/
;/

Best Move: citro targeting Hulk Hogan
Led to a guilty on someone who was statistically less likely to be mafia and meant Ron Burgundy’s night action wasn’t wasted. Game could have been very different without a guilty on Hogan helping to point at Roosevelt being mafia.

Worst Move: Mafia not killing Ron Burgundy
It’s understandable why they didn’t, since he was reasonably suspicious and they didn’t want to risk a hider kill, but it clearly hurt the mafia big time, and I think that UncleSam would have claimed hider if he were hider.

Most Obvious Townie: Spiffy
Easy choice; he was so obvious that the mafia felt that they had to get rid of him. Very helpful posts, active, and had pretty good reads.

Least Obvious Scum: Altair/Aura_Guardian
Went under the radar for quite a while; people noted “hey he is under the radar” but most didn’t truly suspect him. I thought most of his posts were pretty pro-town. a_g stepped in and did a good job, too.

Mafia MVP: Blue_Tornado
Led his team, led a mislynch, almost helped avoid the Borat lynch Day 2, avoided being lynched Day 4.

Village MVP: UncleSam
Led the village Day 2 and 3, had Borat’s number, thought of how to get the Hogan clear/guilty. Decent enough end of Day 1, even though his early Day 1 wasn’t too great. His dying words of “Lynch Yosemite Sam and then Teddy” ended up being followed to a T even after his death.

I had a good time hosting this game; I hope that people enjoyed playing or watching! I’ll open up the other forums to viewing later tonight.

I'll comment on other stuff later, I think. Again, don't think the decision to not kill Sam on D1 was bad - we didn't have a way of knowing if he'd have claimed hider as hider or if he deliberately claimed to be "a power role" to lure a kill (which was something I suspected), and keeping him around would have wasted a chunk of D2 getting a claim out of him (don't forget that he was suspected). Dali was the almost unarguable best kill at the time, and considering our other choices were Rollie, Nietzche and Yosemite... yeah, the turnout would have been suboptimal either way, but not by as much. If you want the worst move of the game retroactively, yeah, the N1 kill is it.

Also, I must applaud shinyskarmory on his amazing metal_sonic impersonation; I knew the chance of metal_sonic being in the game at that point was extremely small, otherwise I would've thought metal_sonic was trying to push his ''#1 scumhunter'' act again. It was pretty obvious it was shinyskarmory for his post that included ''Make Einstein relatively dead'' - afaik, shinyskarmory is just about the only one to incorporate flavour in his lynch votes.

Thanks for hosting this, DLE. This was the most fun NOC game I've had so far (played in one before this) and all the players were nice and good players as well. Inactivity in the end was a shame though but I think/thought it was a part of the mafia's strategy.

I am biased to analyze my own gameplay but my strategy was to think stuff over without resorting to mafiascum wiki or other theory sources and play rather boldly to cement myself as a villager from early on to prevent the fiasco of mafia framing me for weird behavior in the midgame. As for scumhunting, my primary strategy was to survive lynches myself and to support the bandwagons started by people I'd find both pro and clean.

I think I'll play in future NOC games also; hopefully I get to be a mafia so that I can do reverse-reverse psychology.

When I was getting tracker-psyched, we (the mafia) decided that there were two courses of action. One, I kill the tracker. Two, sacrifice me. Not sacrificing me would have forced us to get all 3 people mislynched who could be, and that would only work if the hider had targeted not one of those three the next night. That could have been arranged, but seemed unlikely. Sacrificing me, however, was supposed to give us a slight increase in breathing room. With the Hider dead, 4 that could be mislynched, so we would only need 3/4 instead of 3/3. One of us was likely going to die, anyway, so we decided on sacrificing me. Sadly, this did not work out, but it was worth a shot, since it seemed most likely for a win.

And yeah, I should have counter-claimed, somehow. Lying low to try and catch another mafia or something. Ah well.

Ya I agree that you needed to limit the number of people who were cleaned as much as possible...to be honest with you, I think that both you and Borat should've claimed power roles (particularly Hider/Tracker) because that would've confused us quite a bit and at least expanded the pool of potential mislynch targets.

Moderator

I don't think that claiming hider in this case would have been good; Spiffy was the most obv of obv-towns at the time and was quite active, and I don't think Borat would have made for a believable night kill target to counter-claim it, and I don't think Roosevelt should have risked doing that and needed to stay on the DL. And I think that AG or Altair would have been best served counter-claiming you.

With regards to the "worst move," I did sort of mean for it to be a bit retroactive. I think otherwise the worst move would have been Borat's stealth, which strategically and functionally was pretty poor. Perhaps I'm a bit biased with regards to not claiming hider, and I noted I understood why the kill that was done was done, but it did ultimately hurt the mafia in a huge way, and I still think signs pointed to him not being the hider, even if it's understandable why the mafia did not want to take the risk or read it differently.

Ya I was talking to A_G when I said that, the "you" was referring to him not to Roosevelt. I do think Roosevelt should've stayed silent.

And yes I agree they should've counter claimed me...I suppose they could've claimed Psych instead of Hider but Hider was the role they really needed dead and knowing who it was would've helped avoid catastrophes like the first night.

Hey! So I was gonna post this somewhat soon after the game but then I had all these essays and blah blah blah.

But this was a really fun game (bar the tunneling on paperblade = ( still sorry about that man).
Some notes; I think that unclesam and quagsires (whoever nieztsche was) played really well, getting borat voted d2 sealed the game. Sam's plan pretty much trapped the mafia and nietzsche's post were super town from the beginner and he was really reliable at deadlines.
I don't think shinyskarmory played too bad, most players actually thought you were town or null on some level it's just you were in the most lynchable situation at the end of d2.
I really should have looked at blue tornado harder because he and paperblade had very similar scummy stuff, I just caught onto him first and went all confirmation bias.
Also just saying after borat flipped mafia I thought hogan was mafia because he went all "suspicious" of borat but didn't vote him (I find it a really reliable scumtell after the person who was suspicioned flips mafia).

Thanks for hosting dle = )

Apparently you guys are looking for more players or something?
Would not mind playing more mafia games on this site. I've only played a couple noc games in a few places but have played a ton of rtm, but yeah would be interested because you guys seem competitive but not tooo competitive and pretty nice = )